Family Matters
by Starlit Skyline
Summary: Mikasa realizes just how much Armin had become part of her family. Mikasa/Armin/Eren bonding fic!


A Matter of Family

The horses trotted calmly down the earthen path of the forest, their riders alert but in a relatively peaceful mood. A quiet one at that. Mostly because Eren and Jean weren't fighting with each other. Why not? Because Eren had been left behind, for reasons unknown. Mikasa knew he'd come down with a nasty case of flu, nothing too drastic but he _was _running a fever, but she suspected Eren had also managed to annoy Captain Levi into not letting him come as punishment. (It wasn't common, but there was only one Eren after all. He wasn't as replaceable as the others. Being sick on an expedition could prove lethal.)

It was a simple scouting mission, after all, so wouldn't be heading that far out anyway.

Mikasa had chosen to ride at the end of the line, just a little ways behind Armin and the Titan-obsessed woman who was rambling rather passionately about something. Armin didn't seem to mind though and Mikasa mostly tuned the conversation out, wondering how Eren was doing back inside the Walls. He was certainly more safe there than out there, though having him out of her sight made her slightly anxious. Whichever way you looked at it, Eren was a magnet for trouble. She couldn't trust him not to do something stupid.

Overall, Mikasa found she was enjoying the afternoon sun and the cluster of horse hooves and hushed human voices.

That was before the Titans came and ruined everything.

The forest had turned into a battlefield a few minutes after. Twelve Titans, three in the four meter category, seven in the five meter category and two in the ten. They'd looked easy enough to take care of. Of course, Jean just had to get cocky with one of the three meters and let his guard down just enough to let one of the sevens almost trap him in its massive fist. Almost. But Armin had been there to push him out of the way.

Jean was out of the path of destruction, but Armin was not.

The Titan's jaw clamped shut around the petite boy's waist with an awful crunch and harrowing scream of pain that soon turned to breathless, heaving pants. Mikasa turned just in time to see the god-awful sight of Armin hanging upside down, trapped between the Titan's crawling lips and chattering teeth.

The monster was actually _chewing _him slowly, ever so slowly, as if tasting its victim before shredding it with its teeth and swallowing, before it let the sweet blood of humanity trickle down its throat. Mikasa literally sees red.

She crashes down, blades at the ready and greedily biting into the neck of the foul Titan, descending on it with the full fury of the famous Angel of Death, as she'd been nicknamed by many.

The abomination staggers – one step, two – its mouth hanging open and it's meal slipping between it's lips, and she doesn't think how close a call it could be as she spins around on her Maneuver Gear before either Armin's twisted, lithe body or the Titan can hit the ground.

She lands high up in the trees, careful of her precious burden as she sets it down on the thick branch. His breathing is labored and his shirt stained crimson, and Mikasa doesn't need to look to know his ribs are probably broken. But she does. She needs to know. _How many? How many? _Her mind inquires urgently, and perhaps with the slightest whisper of panic, as she unbuttons his shirt.

She's holding him like a mother holds a child, or a friend a comrade's wounded form or whomever because the only thing that matters is that he's in her arms and she wasn't about to let him go. For anything.

Below them, the rest of the Recon Crops battle it out, but Mikasa doesn't join them.

Later, when the Titans were dead and gone, Levi lands next to her up in the tree.

"Ackerman, where'd you run off to?" he barks. He always reminds her of a dog when he does that, or some old military official who'd somehow managed to survive long enough to earn the privilege of being old and wizened and the lone figure among the sea of gravestones. The image complimented young Levi in a way it should not have complimented anyone.

"Armin was injured, Sir." she answers curtly, her tone a mechanic thing as her thoughts reel towards other things than the one at present. She is focused though, always focused. She needs to be. "He needs medical attention."

Her Captain spares but a glance at her charge – but it's one that lingers far longer than it lasts and it seethes quietly, not unlike that of Eren's – before his gaze locks with her own gray ones and neither seems quite as detached as was their wont.

Levi doesn't say anything else, just turns around and sets their course back on home. It was his job to return the wounded to their place of healing, their would-be sanctuary. It was his job to bring them home alive.

* * *

><p>It takes them an extra day to come back, alive and mostly whole, as they drag themselves through the crowded streets. The people are cheering around them, because the number of dead is surprisingly low and for their presumptuous minds that can only be a good thing. Mikasa wants them all too just shut and be quiet. Armin was withering in pain next to her, bandages wrapping around his chest and pale as the threadbare sheets that cover him. He looks small – maybe the smallest she'd ever seen him – and it's like a punch to the gut because he'd <em>grown <em>so much in the past few months and to see him again as the defenseless boy she'd had to protect from bullies shook her somewhere in the darkest pits of her being. Her cold, cold, unfeeling core.

Back then, when they were just kids bare of the skill and knowledge of killing Titans, she hadn't cared for him as such. She'd cared because Eren had cared and she'd protected Armin because Armin was someone precious to Eren. Overtime, he'd become precious to her too – not like Eren, her purpose, but not quite unlike him. Armin had wiggled his way into her heart of stone and things long dead and buried and she didn't have the will to kick him out of that desolate place. She'd taken him in.

The crowd rumbles and parts and Mikasa's eyes are drawn to the scene in front of their morbid caravan. Eren is making his way towards them, his eyes wide and bright as he stares at her questioningly. He sees no injuries on her, she knows. As they begin to slow in front of the barracks she beckons him closer and he climbs into the cart among the many bloodied bodies – no, not many, there are less corpses and wounded than usual, but Mikasa doesn't care to notice.

Eren draws a haggard breath when he sees the face of the figure nested in Mikasa's lap. She pushes a few stray locks of sunny hair gently away from her charge's pale face.

Eren is still watching – stunned, confused, teeming with questions and seething – his fist clench and unclench every few seconds, as if he wants to squeeze the life out of the Titan that had done this. Like Mikasa already had.

She can see it in his eyes, that all too familiar anger, and feels something in the hole she's come to know as her chest – her heart of dead things and ashes – stir in response.

But then it's gone, like a candle's flame before the wind. The glimmer of light remained as a ghost though and the will to ignite itself lingered evermore, but now, in this moment, Mikasa chose not to dwell on that. She wasn't fond of questioning herself and her belief and she certainly wasn't fond of turning them into metaphors.

In that moment, she and Eren, they were beaten and sad. Not defeated, never defeated, but filled with a kind of desolation that was neither grief or the relief of being alive.

Mikasa watched Eren out of the corner of her eye, watches as his eyes burned green, like molten jades or the dancing green grass in the fields of their childhood. Eren's gaze was comforting and all-encompassing in its intensity, even now that it only saw Armin in his battered state. He'd live though, he had to.

Because if Armin didn't, than the flame in Eren's eyes could really be extinguished. A possibility Mikasa didn't like to even consider.

Eren's was a fire that had warmed her over the many years she'd spent in the freezing, icy world around them.

It was a fire that burned to protect as much as destroy.

* * *

><p><em>AN: This turned out... kinda strange. I wasn't sure if I should post it or not, so I figure, eh, what's the harm?<em>

_Thoughts?_


End file.
